The Endless Note

Sunday Sounds – The Blind Boys Of Alabama

Today’s Sunday Sounds features the legendary Blind Boys of Alabama and their version if the iconic “Amazing Grace”.

“Amazing Grace” is a Christian hymn written by English poet and clergyman John Newton (1725–1807) published in 1779. With a message that forgiveness and redemption is possible regardless of the sins people commit and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God, “Amazing Grace” is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world, it is estimated that it is performed 10 million times a year.

This particular version taken from a Daytrotter Session, recorded on the 29th March 2010, departs slightly from the norm as the song is sung to the tune “House Of The Rising Sun” which is very much regarded as being an american traditional folk song, also known as “Rising Sun Blues”. Alan Price of The Animals who had the biggest hit version of the songs has often claimed that the song was originally a sixteenth-century English folk song about a Soho brothel, and that English emigrants took the song to America where it was adapted to its later New Orleans setting.